The Noble Tale of Bloodstones Incorporated
by Lady Mage
Summary: Once Upon a Time in the Land of Far and Near, there lived three princes who defied tradition. They needed to marry. How else should they find their wives than by shooting arrows in the air and choosing the girl who had the arrow? Copyright 2005.


**Summary: Once Upon a Time, there is a very untraditional royal family. **

**Rating: K**

**Disclaimers: I got hurroks and spindrens from Tamora Peirce's **_**The Immortals**_** and **_**Protector of the Small**_** quartets, and the idea of bloodstones from Robin Mckinley's **_**The Hero and the Crown**_

**Pronunciations: ****Cerdic is pronounced SERdic, Cyndric is pronounced SYNdric, Orthene is Ortheenee, and Luthwin is pronounced LUTHwin.****And now, I proudly present:**

**The Noble Tale of Bloodstones Incorporated**

Once Upon a Time, in the Castle of Faraway, in the kingdom and monarchy of Far and Near, there was a prince. His name was Cerdic and he had two younger brothers named Cyndric and Danager.

The royal family totally flouted tradition, and the royal ministers were always nagging them about it. They told the royal family that Cerdic and Cyndric should always be fighting each other, and that Danager should have a "heart of gold", be brave, courageous and friendly.

However, it was exactly the opposite. Cerdic and Cyndric never fought. They were the best of friends and always fought dragons and rescued fair ladies together.

Danager, on the other hand, was a different matter. He was a sorcerer, and neither friendly or honorable, but devious, sneaky, and crafty.

The ministers were forever pestering King Paladin to have some sort of contest-like task to get his sons married off so they could inherit their estates in Jagania and they would be eligible for the throne when the time came. But the king was still young and not at all inclined to die or be assassinated anytime soon, so he kept putting it off.

Paladin finally relented when Orthene, Danager's old nurse and a member of the traditional political party, threatened to turn all the mice in the kingdom into footmen so there would be a huge unemployment rating. Orthene said that the task had to be set by the fussiest of the royal ministers—her husband Luthwin. Luthwin was very old and a leading member of the same political party.

Luthwin assigned the task: Shoot an arrow with your name on it, go and find it, and marry the maiden who sees it first.

Cerdic and Cyndric shot their arrows off in the same direction; Danager shot his off in the opposite. Then they set off to find their arrows.

Cerdic and Cyndric searched all day long and all night long. Come dawn, they decided to stop to rest and water their horses at a little creek. As they came through the bushes, and there, sitting on the edge of the creek were two exquisitely beautiful maidens- a tall blonde, and a sturdy looking no-nonsense maiden with laughing green eyes. They were making bows for the arrows they held in their teeth.

Cerdic and Cyndric introduced themselves. The tall blonde's name was Freya and she had Cyndric's arrow. The sturdy maiden with the green eyes was Asgard, and she had Cerdic's arrow. They had lost their bows and arrows in a fight with a dragon, (at this Cerdic and Cyndric gaped at Freya and Asgard) and had been delighted to find the princes' arrows.

When Cerdic asked Asgard and Cyndric asked Freya to marry them, they both hesitated. After a whispered conference they told the princes, "We will come along for the adventure and see later."

As they made camp that night, they felt a trembling in the ground, and three seconds later, a dragon with ten heads and a hundred eyes burst into the clearing. Asgard and Freya leaped for their bows, only to find that they were not there. Racing to the princes' supply packs, they pulled out a bow and fifty arrows each and ran to wake up the princes.

The princes sprang to their feet, wide awake in an instant, and pulled out their swords. Cerdic attacked from the left, Cyndric attacked from the right, and Asgard and Freya worked on putting out as many of the eyes with their bows as they could.

When the dragon was finally dead, and had belched its last belch of flame, and the last bit of smoke had come out its ears, Asgard leaped up, took her dagger and cut out the dragon's heart. Inside was a bloodstone, about the size of two dice. Asgard pulled it out, cleaned it, and tucked it into her belt pouch.

"What is that?" Cerdic asked "May I see?"

"Of course" Asgard replied and handed the belt pouch to him.

Cerdic pulled bloodstones out one by one. They were all of a different size, shape, and weight. No two were exactly alike.

"Where did you get all these?" Cerdic asked, beginning counting them.

"From dragons Freya and I killed" Asgard replied calmly.

"You killed 53 dragons?" Cerdic asked completely astonished.

"Yup" said Freya, coming up "Our mother loves bloodstones. We were going to have a necklace made for her birthday" then she added as if an after thought "They have extreme magical properties. If the bad person gets his or her hands on them and they are to be used for ill, that person will blow up"

The next morning they set off for the Castle of Faraway. That morning the four had to fight off two hurroks (nasty winged horses), three spindrens (gigantic spiders with human heads) and another dragon. It seemed as if somebody didn't want them to arrive at the castle.

Late that afternoon, they spotted the Village of Near, and five minutes later, they could see the Castle of Faraway in the distance. They approached, the drawbridge was thrown down, the portcullis was raised, and they were all taken to nice warm baths awaiting in their chambers.

After dinner, Cerdic, Cyndric, Danager, and their brides-to-be reported to their father and Luthwin. Danager's bride, Esmeralda, was a frog (much to Luthwin and Orthene's delight) However, Danager had preformed all the traditional cures and she was still a frog.

In the middle of the night, Danager went down to the kitchens and poisoned the special lemon-water that the king had for breakfast every morning. He wanted his father dead and the entire kingdom and monarchy of Far and Near thrown into chaos.

Asgard was sleepwalking and dreaming that she was taking the bloodstones to the jeweler. Before she woke up and realized what she was doing, she had dumped all the bloodstones into the lemon-water that Danager had just poisoned. The scuttle of a mouse woke her, she felt silly, and retrieved the bloodstones. Danager, watching from a corner, decided that he had a new enemy.

When King Paladin didn't drop dead the next morning after drinking three and a half gallons of lemon-water (due to several very sticky cinnamon buns), Danager resolved to steal the bloodstones.

Danager followed Asgard and Freya to the jeweler in the village of near the next day, and waited till they came out. Then he went in and told the jeweler that his house was burning down and his wife and baby were perishing in the flames. The jeweler left immediately and Danager stole the bloodstones.

That night, using his own powers, and the powers of the bloodstones, he cast an invisibility spell and crept to his father's chamber's to kill him while he slept.

When Danager got to the king's bedside, he used the bloodstones' magic to create a dagger of Jagainian Steel, the best in the land. He pressed the dagger up to his father's neck…and with a bang, he exploded. King Paladin woke up, the chief royal hall sweeper peeked in and fainted, and Cerdic, Cyndric, Asgard, and Freya all rushed into the room at the same time, colliding with each other.

After a week of mourning was up, there was a double wedding where Cerdic married Asgard and Cyndric married Freya.

King Paladin was beside himself with wonder that the bloodstones had saved his life, and proclaimed them the national gem.

Cerdic and Asgard and Cyndric and Freya formed a dragon slaying corporation since they all worked so well together. They supplied the jewelers with plenty of bloodstones and because of this, they named their company Bloodstones Incorporated. With all of them on the job, all the bad dragons were killed.

And Asgard and Freya's mother? She finally got the bloodstone necklace for her birthday. When informed that her bloodstones had saved the life of King Paladin, she was really excited. She figured that she would start her own museum, and people came from all over the realm of Far and Near to see the bloodstones that had saved their king's life.

And so, they all lived happily ever after, excepting the dragons of course.

* * *

_Copyright 2005_


End file.
